


the saddest word in the whole wide world

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, i'm sorry i'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2732789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She turned back towards him and her mouth parted slightly, as if she was about to say something. Her eyes met him and a thousand unsaid words seemed to pass between them, in the same unspoken communication they had had before, when they were able to anticipate the other's movements and finish each other's sentences like they had been born out of the same mind. For the longest time, Fitz had wondered whether they were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the saddest word in the whole wide world

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this probably way too quickly but I wanted to get it written while I could still remember it. It's basically just what will probably be a really AU set of events of the mid-season finale, inspired by this really sad poem: http://untamedunwanted.tumblr.com/post/93318561473/the-saddest-word-in-the-whole-wide-world-is-the. Once again, I'm really really sorry.

“The saddest word in the whole wide world is the word _almost_.”

 

 

He was almost in love.

 

 

 _I'm not in love with her._ The rhythm of Fitz's thoughts matched his heartbeat, beating all the way through his chest as his feet hit the ground again and again. _I'm not. I'm over it._

He could feel her next to him, her anxiety thrumming like a cello's strings. She was watching him, but trying not to let him know that she was, trying not to distract him, like she always did nowadays. She was making herself smaller, shrinking before his eyes. It wasn't working. He always knew when she was there. He always had.

'Is there-'

'No.'

Silence.

'Can I-'

'Jemma, no.'

Silence again.

They kept walking, their footsteps echoing off the roof of the underground tunnel, Fitz's tablet creating an eerie blue glow as it searched desperately for any sign of life besides them in the endless maze of labyrinthine corridors. He was looking for Coulson, for Bobbi. For Mack. Or maybe not for Mack. _Damn it!_

The tablet slipped out of Fitz's shaking fingers and clattered to the floor in his flash of fury. A fist clenched around his chest as he thought of Mack and he blinked back tears as he bent down to retrieve the tablet. But Jemma was quicker than he was. She ducked under him and scooped it up off the floor, brushing off the dust from the screen. He only saw her fingers hover over the new little-finger length crack in the screen for a millisecond, then she held it out to him with a shy smile.

'Thanks,' he muttered, and watched the ghost of a smile bloom across her face, making her eyes light up like a small child on Christmas morning.

'No problem.'

He hadn't been lying, he thought, when he had told her she looked different. She did. Her hair was chopped and wavy, the kind of wavy he hadn't seen since their Academy days, when she would bound into the lab, straight from the shower, eyes bright, to tell him about a new idea she had had. She was thinner too; he didn't like that as much as he did the hair. Of course, he couldn't say anything on either accounts. The bruises around her neck were new too.

_I'm not in love with her._

'Fitz?'

'Yeah?'

'Let me help.'

_I'm in love with her._

 

  
She was almost good for him.

 

 

'If we just reconnect the retrievers to the central control on the Bus...'

She was talking and he was trying to listen but he was distracted by her hands, as they moved fluidly across the fractured tablet screen. Her fingers were long and white, but the backs of her palms were covered in small scratches and burns from all they had been through that day. His mouth went dry as he imagined being able to kiss them better.

'Fitz?'

Jemma was looking at him hesitantly, her lower lip faltering slightly. His mirrored hers without him realising that; force of habit, he supposed.

'Yeah, what, sorry?' The words fell out of his mouth in a gasp. Looking at her for too long was dangerous.

'I said, I want you to do it,' she said gently, pressing the tablet over into his hands. The tips of her fingers were icy, yet her palms were burning.

'No, no.' Fitz pushed it back towards her. 'It's, um, probably best if you do it. I can't...I can't...'

'You _can_.' She was smiling again, nervously, as she rested her hands in her lap. She was smiling at him, Fitz realised, in that encouraging, eager way she always had done. Letting him know that she believed in him and wanted to support him. Coming from anyone else, a smile like that would have been patronising.

When he didn't respond to her, the corners of her smile drooped a little and she spoke softer. 'I know you can.'

With a deep breath, Fitz's hands closed around the edges of the tablet reluctantly. Jemma had restarted the connection, putting them back onto the Playground's base system, but it needed to link up to the Bus's, so they could pick up on the rest of their team's tracker codes. Not only that, but it would also alert them to any unknowns in the tunnel systems, unknowns that would mean enemies. With a few quick taps and swipes, Fitz locked the connection. Within seconds, red dots appeared on the blueprint of the underground city, dots that meant Coulson, that meant Bobbi, that meant safety. Fitz's breath he hadn't known he was holding whistled out through his teeth.

'I did it,' he said, brusquely.

'Told you so,' Jemma replied, her shoulder brushing against his, just for a moment.

Fitz looked up at her, a sarcastic retort leaping to the front of his mind but, much to his frustration, it failed to reach his lips. Instead, he could only give her half a grin. She rewarded him with another smile.

'Now,' he said, forcing his attention back to the screen. 'If we just take a left, and then another left, Coulson ought to be-'

A sharp crack maybe two corner turns away from them made Fitz's heart skip a beat and Jemma's hands jump up to clutch onto the sleeve of his shirt. Both of them had been so focused on their goal, on their mission, that neither of them had noticed the small cluster of black dots on the tablet screen that had been slowly closing in on them.  
Hydra had found them.

 

 

He almost stopped her.

 

 

Fitz wasn't sure how it had happened. Something must have gone wrong, he knew that much. Hydra wasn't supposed to know about where the underground city was, that was supposed to have been their edge, the information that had pushed them into this mission, into this godforsaken mess. Trip had gotten shot for that information. Because of that information, Mack was _gone_.

Pressed inside a narrow alcove, Jemma at his side, Fitz grit his teeth. They had had only seconds to leap up from their crouches before the Hydra soldiers had cleared the corner, even less time to find somewhere to hide. Jemma had grabbed his hand and dragged him into the alcove as they passed it; Fitz hadn't even seen the small opening in the tunnel wall. Now, they were pressed, chest to chest, her breath hot on his neck, his making her hair tremble.

They were surrounded. And the tablet on the floor told Fitz that, with every heartbeat, Coulson and Bobbi were moving further and further away from them.

Fitz closed his eyes and tried not to think about how he could feel Jemma's pulse pressing on his wrist.

She muttered something so low he had to bend his head down to get her to repeat it. 'I might have an idea.'

'Okay.'

'It's pretty dangerous.'

'Absolutely not.'

'Oh, Fitz,' she murmured in a way so familiar he could have been back in the lab, on the Bus, at the Academy. But he wasn't. She sighed. 'Brainwashing.'

He frowned. 'You're going to brainwash them?'

'No. They're going to brainwash me. Or think they have, anyway.'

He didn't understand.

Jemma gave a shaky sigh. 'There is roughly a 70% chance,' she explained softly. 'That during my time undercover at Hydra I was implanted with a trigger phrase that would activate a brainwashing system should it be required.' She was using his language, Fitz realised. Lab language. She probably didn't think would scare him as much, but she was wrong, so wrong.

'If I made them think that that system has been activated then I can draw them away, give you time to...' She trailed off. Normally, this would be the part when he offered suggestions, filled in her blanks. But for once, he was speechless.

'You could go get Coulson,' Jemma offered lamely. 'He and Bobbi could-'

'No.'

'Fitz-'

' _No_.'

'Fitz, please.'

'No, I don't want to.'

He sounded like a child, he knew that. Fitz wished he _was_ a child, that he could still be little and wide-eyed and had never shot a man or lost a friend or heard the word Hydra.

'Well, do you have any better ideas?' Jemma asked him, her hands on her hips and tears shining in her eyes.

No, he didn't.

For once, they were out of ideas. And they were out of time, too.  
  


 

She almost waited.

 

 

'Jemma, wait.'

He saw her hesitate in the half light, her body seize up as he reached for her wrist when she passed him to move out into the open.

She turned back towards him and her mouth parted slightly, as if she was about to say something. Her eyes met him and a thousand unsaid words seemed to pass between them, in the same unspoken communication they had had before, when they were able to anticipate the other's movements and finish each other's sentences like they had been born out of the same mind. For the longest time, Fitz had wondered whether they were.  
Jemma's eyes closed, fleetingly, and then she fixed him with her large brown eyes, shining with tears, and mouthed two words.

_I'm sorry._

Then, she had turned away from him, his fingers trailing down her wrist as she walked out of the alcove and into the path of the Hydra agents. Fitz pressed himself to the wall positioning himself so he was still hidden, but could still see the back of Jemma's head moving further and further away from him. The agents had frozen when she had walked out, possibly more from shock than anything else. Jemma had her hands clasped in front of her and her walk was controlled and cool. When she spoke, it was with a smooth, lifeless voice.

'I am ready to compl-'

BANG.

The first shot was such a shock that Fitz jumped backwards and he almost felt like it was his body that had taken the bullet. But it hadn't been.

Jemma hadn't moved. Her head had jerked, her hair bouncing slightly off her shoulders, but other than that she has stood stock still. Fitz couldn't breathe.

BANG.

With the second shot, Jemma's body seemed to cave inwards. Her shoulder's hunched, her knees sagged and, just barely, Fitz heard her gasp.

Skye had been shot twice. She had been shot twice in the gut and lived to tell the tale. Fitz couldn't move.

BANG.

The third shot was a harder one than the others had been and blood stains began to bleed out of the back of her shirt, like spilt red wine, or crushed strawberries. Jemma had had hand sanitiser that smelt like strawberries.

BANG.

The fourth shot came merely seconds after the first rang out, the shots had come in such quick succession, but to Fitz, entire lifetimes had passed. Jemma's body crumpled in on itself, and she fell backwards, her limps as slack as a rag doll's as she hit the ground with a soft thud.

As she fell, she spoke, a single word, a murmur, meant only for Fitz's ears. One word, three letters.

_Run._

 

 

He almost lived.

 

 

He did what she said. Heaven help him, God forgive him, Fitz turned on his heel and fled. He heard more shots behind him, but by some miracle (or was it a curse?) none of them ever found their target.

A Hydra agent stepped in front of his path as he turned a corner and raised a gun in his direction. Without thinking, Fitz raised his fist and punched him in the face, harder than he had ever hit anything in his life. The man went down with a sickening crack; Fitz couldn't tell if it had been the guy's nose or his own fingers that had broken and he didn't care.

_They've killed her. I'll kill them all._

Fitz was sobbing as he ran, blindly, through the tunnels. He'd left the tablet behind in the alcove, like he'd left her too. The light was gone. He didn't know where he was going anymore.

He saw it happen, again and again, with every beat his heart took without her. The shot. The gasp. The blood. The fall. She was there every time he blinked, her image imprinted on the back of his eyelids like a tattoo.

_I'll kill them all._

Fitz rounded a corner too fast and fell over his feet, his face scrapping along the gritty floor. He barely felt the pain, but the fall had crushed his chest and he rolled over, choking on blood and spit. His hands were shaking as he tried to scramble back to his feet, gripping at the walls to support him. It was only when he was finally back on his unsteady legs that he realised – he'd reached a dead end.

Fitz wanted to laugh. He probably would have done, had he not been crying so hard. A dead end. Possibly the only dead end in this entire bloody cave system and he had had to run straight into it. Bloody typical.

Several Hydra agents rounded the corner, their weapons pointed on him. One of them had blood stains all the way down his vest; Fitz felt an overwhelming surge of rage when he realised that it was probably Jemma's blood. He'd touched her to get those stains.

Something clenched inside his stomach, something clicked inside his head. _I'm going to die_. It was the second time in Fitz's short life that he had thought those words with such certainty, the second time he had felt resigned to the fact his life was going to be over. The first time, it had felt good and right. _Let me show you_. This time, he was furious. _I'm sorry_.

'Come on, then!' he screamed at the Hydra agents, suddenly, throwing his arms wide in a daring invitation. 'Take a shot! Or maybe three? Four?'

_They'd shot her four times._

He took a step towards the stunned agents, who lifted their guns a little higher as he moved towards them; he was unarmed and injured, but he was unnerving them. To Fitz, that was hilarious.  
'What?' he yelled, a hysterical laugh escaping his mouth as the tears still streamed down his face. 'What is it, you cowards? Because you are cowards, _I saw you_!' He was walking towards them now, his arms still spread wide in challenge white hot anger burning the back of his throat. ' _I saw you_! You fucking shot HER-'

BANG.

Fitz froze, the words he had been about to say knocked from his mind with the force of the bullet. He gasped. Looking down, a hot pool of blood appeared down the front of his shirt and leaked onto his fingers as he held his chest in shock. His knees went weak as another shower of bullet hit into his body as he fell.

The shot. The gasp. The blood. The fall.

 _Just like her_ , Fitz thought absently, as he hit the floor. Then the world turned black.

 

 

They _almost_ made it.

 

 

Skye half fell out of the Bus, tumbling over her own feet in her eagerness to make it to Coulson, who was just climbing out of the quinjet, Bobbi helping Mack just behind him. They all looked pretty banged up, even from a distance, but alive, they were alive. Skye couldn't ask for more than that.

'Thank God,' she breathed, flinging herself at Coulson the minute she reached him and wrapping her arms around his neck. He flinched at her touch; Skye wondered if she had gone in a little hard, or hit a sore spot on his body. She pulled back, a little embarrassed.

'We've got so much to tell you guys,' she said, as May, Trip and Hunter came up behind them. 'Ward...' Skye trailed off, her eyes running over the rest of her team and realising that two people were missing. 'Wait, where's...where's Fitzsimmons?'

Coulson's mouth opened, and then closed again as he inhaled sharply. For the first time, Skye noticed that Bobbi's eyes were red-rimmed and there was blood all over Mack's t-shirt.

'No,' she whispered.

'Skye,' Coulson said, softly, in the kind of voice you used on an injured animal, or a sick little kid. A voice to sooth, not startle.

' _No_ ,' she repeated, pushing away from him, sickness twisting in her gut. 'Coulson, please tell me they made it.' Her voice was hoarse and she was begging him now, like a little girl. 'Please.'

She knew the answer, even before he said it, his voice cracking with emotion. And it was the saddest word in the whole wide world.

'Almost.'

 


End file.
